Josh McAllister MP’s private member's bill, Digital Safety and Data Protection
So let me set the scene: Mariano, Stuart and I, all bereaved parents, & party to the “Bereaved Families for Online Safety” group, arrived again at Westminster Palace for the final meeting regarding Josh McAllister MP’s private member's bill… Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill - A Bill to make provisions for protecting children accessing digital services and content. We are all quite used to the security entry now, but I am always amazed at the vastness and grandeur of Westminster Palace. We were actually going to sit in front of social media companies and have the chance to talk to them directly. There was no way I was missing this meeting. It was 9:50 a.m., and there was no one else in the room. While considering whether we had the wrong room (apparently, there are over 1100 rooms in total), we all said we didn't think the tech companies would actually turn up. Finally, the room started to fill.
Meeting in Parliament, various MPs, BT, Virgin Media O2, Mobile UK, Vodafone, YouTube, Breck Foundation, Stuart, Mariano, Ellen, Meta, Tiktok, Global Action Plan, Snapchat
Everyone went around the table to introduce themselves. I couldn't believe this was happening. I was shocked that the social media companies actually turned up. Gosh, this meeting could have continued a lot longer than just 2 hours. I was trying to hear every word intently, I didn't want to miss one bit. I don’t think I’ve ever taken as many notes in a meeting as I did on Wednesday.
I would like to comment on a few main things. My thoughts are my own, and I’ve tried to be accurate with what I heard and now repeating.
Meta - Rebecca Stimson, UK Director of Public Policy - said that they are trialling age verification with AI software in the US. Apparently, it's good for those over 18 but not so good for working out the age of younger users. Umm, maybe they need to think of something else. All this talk of teens accounts and protecting children, they have numerous children on their platform who have given a false age, so whilst they are talking about protecting children, they still need to work out who are the teens with a false age. It's all a bit back to front for me.
Snapchat - Sanjit Gill, Head of Public Policy, UK & Ireland - I could feel my blood boiling with her. She made a series of shocking statements, and I thought she came across as delivering legal lip service. The best one-liner was probably that, she said, their users spend one hour a day on their platform. I would love to see the stats on this and, more specifically, 13-16 year old usage. This was also an interesting statement…. “Snapchat is the only platform that has a positive impact on children."
Snapchat also doesn't see itself as a social media company but as a messaging company.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington MP) raised the issue that numerous constituents in her area were concerned about bullying, the Snapchat representative sounded surprised and said she would like to follow up separately about that with Lola. Snapchat, how on earth can you be surprised that there is bullying on your platform when your messages are deleted straight away? When asked whether the age should be 13 or 16 for their platform, she said that people 18 to 24 are struggling, so I took this as ‘Why are we worrying about 13 to 16-year-olds when older people were struggling too’. One of the MPs came out with a great retort. …” Basically, Snapchat, I assume that your platform isn't suitable for anybody since you implied everybody is struggling”.
TikTok – Ben Bradley, Senior Public Policy & Government Relations Manager, said they have lead experts working within their system. They couldn't confirm whether these experts had any professional or medical qualifications.
TikTok apparently removed 21 million users who they felt were under 13 last year. When challenged on how many were removed in the UK, he wasn't sure about the number but thought it was between 2 to 2.5 million users. One of the MPs made the point that there are only about five million people under 16 years old in the UK, which is quite so 2-2.5m users is quite interesting. TikTok said it is built around evidence-based graduate age-appropriate experiences.
YouTube – Iain Bundred, Head of Public Policy, UK & Ireland - said the repeated exposure of harmful content can have a real detrimental effect, and they follow the law. YouTube removes 20 to 30,000 accounts a month when they think the child’s age is incorrect.
There is a generally accepted age of 13, where did this come from? Meta said this is because of GDPR. Kit Malthouse MP said the EU started at 16, and we deviated to 13, and the tech companies haven’t challenged this. I asked why they have children agreeing to terms and conditions at 13? Meta replied that’s the law at the moment. I challenged this to ask if she thought this was right: “It’s a government question on age”. YouTube said they follow the law, being age 13.
When ask by Caroline Voaden MP “Do you think it is good for a child who is 13 or 14 to be spending 5, 6, 7 hours on a device?
Meta replied, “It depends what they are doing, but probably not.” Caroline pushed this again with Meta, who said, “Meta doesn’t have a position on how many hours is the right amount."
YouTube - “Probably not; there is a lot of good educational and health content.”
TikTok – “That’s why we have a 60-minute default time at 13, and then the child receives a warning about how long they have been on the app for” Caroline raised that the child can dismiss this warning and carry on and so asked TikTok “do you think that works?’ TikTok felt this was a strong tool to help children. Most of their users are only on the platform for an hour - Absolute rubbish in my opinion.
Snapchat said their teen users spend an hour a day on average.
The MP Sorcha Eastwood raised a question to all tech companies if they were aware of Alexander McCartney, a prolific paedophile who has abused 3500 children online. Only 3 out of the 4 tech companies were aware of this.
As bereaved parents, we then had the opportunity to speak.
Stuart Stephens, whose son Ollie was murdered via 11 different online platforms, said:
“Being in this room is the closest I’ve been able to get to social media platforms.
Why is the content there in the first place?
Why does it exist?
Why do you allow people to post that kind of thing? TV media abide by laws about what they're allowed to say and what they're allowed to post, but unfortunately, on your platforms, there are no restraints. Anyone can post anything at any time. What are you doing about that?
Why is the onus on the parent to protect their children? That's your responsibility.
Why will you not release my son’s data? During my son’s murder trial, the main perpetrator in his murder walked away with a manslaughter charge because you would not allow Thames Valley police access to his data.
You are global companies; you make money globally, and you make money from our children. Yet when it comes to the law, and it depends on which side of the pond you are on as to what date you actually get.
All I’ve heard today is the targeting of children under 18. Why are you targeting under 18? And I’ll half answer that… it’s because of the addiction that you're all denying doesn't exist. You are getting children hooked on social media, your phones, and your platform, so when they're 18, and they've got money, they're going to spend it on your platforms, making you rich. Children don’t understand that every time they click their screen, somebody's making money out of them.
I believe that as an under-18, the data you produce is your parents’ right to have and see. You are making money out of that data. This is why social media exists about money about money, the bottom line is that it’s all about money.
I would like to see the ownership of data returned to the child and the parent for children under 18 because this would eliminate a lot of what happens on social media.
Mariano Janin, whose daughter Mia died at 14, said, “I'm just listening to TikTok. It sounds like a good and wonderful platform. (sarcastic) You never talk about TikTok challenges; they are still there. Can you explain the benefit of these challenges?”
I then said, “I’m getting emotional, but this is our children, and this is the reality that children are dying, and we've lost our children, and we are here to say please, please, please do something because I don't want any other parents to have to feel like we're feeling. My son was 14 when he died, and I don't have the right to see his data to know what it was looking at. Nothing was found offline, so what the hell was he looking at online? I'm not allowed to see it. I have tried TikTok, Meta & Snapchat, and I've had some data, but I'm not allowed to see messages, so was there sextortion or whatever? I don't know why my 14-year-old child is dead other than how he took his life.
Yesterday, I spent some time with one of his friends who openly admitted to spending 10 hours online the other day when she was low.
This whole thing about what age a child is…. most of my son's friends pop up on my account for me to wish them happy 46th birthday because they've used the parent’s date of birth, so this teen account is a lovely idea, but I really don't think you're going to the crux of it.
Mariano added, We shouldn't be here. We should be working and thinking about Christmas like all of you, but it is different for us. You have the technology and funds to make this safe as well. You need to think about the well-being and the safeguarding of the kids. They are kids, they are minors. I don't know what law allows you to do whatever you want, but it is not the right thing to do. It will take time to change things, and unfortunately, more kids will be in the same position as our kids.
Stuart summed up with “I cant stress this enough, you need to put under 18’s mental wellbeing first”.
Please note that my petition will be discussed in Parliament on 13th January.
https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/661407. - Give parents/guardians a right to access social media accounts of their children